One of the things I've learned in my life about the artificial value of money is that people with a lot of it view it - and issues surrounding it - much differently than people with little money do. If you're never "food insecure" [i.e., hungry, not knowing where your next meal will come from], eating less volume of food, eating better quality of food, and avoiding whole classifications of food is mostly a matter of what's 'food hip' today per the lifestyle and high-level consumerist media sources such people use to determine what's hip today. If going vegetarian is hip this season, you'll find the yacht club denizens swearing off red meat (for awhile, anyway) en masse. If eating expensive artisan multi-grain breads is hip for the tennis and golf crowd, expensive artisan multi-grain breads will appear on the shelves in abundance. If eating organically grown produce and drinking organic, shade-grown coffee or high-priced herbal tea blends is hip, the rich will lead the way on getting these commodities onto store shelves.
There are real advantages to the fact that rich people set or follow trends considered hip in our society. They help to keep the svelt, well-muscled body type a fashionable ideal. Svelt, well-muscled body types are objectively healthier and better equipped to weather life's significant stresses than is the soft-mush obesity that we now recognize as the body-type of the [non-drug addled] poor in this country. This is pretty much opposite to the difference in body types between rich and poor for millennia of human civilization to the 21st century (and in most third world countries to this day). Where the poor are thin but muscular due to hard working conditions, and the rich are soft-mush and fat to show off their privileged access to more rich foods than they need, and lack of hard work to maintain their positions.
The power of rich people to make organic farming and meatless diets popular is also a good thing because it rewards farmers and food producers for switching from chemical-intensive, fuel-inefficient monoculture/GMO practices toward sustainable farming and processing methodologies to serve these tastes. The infrastructure is encouraged to develop and expand without sanction from bureaucrats and corporate greed-heads, to the point where the commodities tend to even out in price and become available to broader (and less wealthy) segments of the population. With some planning and real effort, even the poor can eat healthy.
The best thing someone working with a limited budget can do is read the food labels. For instance, when my family went ovo-lacto vegetarian 35 years ago, we became avid label-readers. We had to become avid label-readers because just about everything at the grocery store used lard or tallow (animal fats) in their products, together with a long list of unpronounceable chemical additives required to 'preserve' those rancid fats. Our motto was "if you can't pronounce it you shouldn't eat it," but then they started referring to such additives not by their chemical details, but euphemistic little acronyms. So we just went straight for the fats. Animal vs. vegetable, saturated vs. unsaturated, hydrogenated vs. non-hydrogenated.
When it became clear to food processors that people were avoiding animal fats (and attendant chemical preservatives), they switched to "New and Improved!" low-fat varieties of cookies, bread, crackers, processed food mixes, etc. made with vegetable oils (too many of those hydrogenated, but at least they weren't rancid).
Second most important information on any food label is the sweetener data. These will be listed as either sugars - sucrose, glucose, fructose, lactose - or chemical substitutes (usually by brand name instead of chemical ID, as mentioned above). Spenda, Sweet'n'Low, aspartame, xylitol, etc. The stuff they put into "diet" sodas we see obese people drinking constantly as if it were somehow making them less obese. Research has demonstrated that some of these substitutes are addictive all by themselves, and that notables among them actually prompt people to crave more calories than they normally would be hungry for.
Now, the sugar industry of course insists that there is "no link between sugar and obesity", just as the AMA insisted in the early 1980s that there is "no link between diet and health." THAT didn't last long with the rank and file, but it was an eloquent statement of the conflicted interests of the AMA and its investments and live-in lobbyists. Still, it's a fact that while sugar consumption per capita has fallen over the last ~35 years, obesity has skyrocketed anyway. This is a reflection of the increased use of high fructose corn syrup [HFCS] by food processors.
Unlike sucrose or glucose (usable by all cells for energy), HFCS must be processed by the liver cells before it's available to the body's other cells for energy. This can cause liver problems as well as causing obesity and the health problems associated with obesity. Worse, almost all HFCS is made from genetically engineered corn using genetically engineered enzymes. While affects are aggravated by copper deficiency (common in America) and most severe in growing children, HFCS is common in sweetened cereals, snacks, sodas and fruit drinks aimed at children. Not surprisingly, the children are getting obese too.
If obesity is the new face of poverty in America, the diseases endemic to obesity (diabetes, high blood pressure, heart and artery disease, some cancers, etc.) are the new face of eugenics in America in the 21st century. We, unlike any other industrialized nation on this planet, ration access to health care. We ration it economically - the rich and beautiful can get the very best of care, the poor, obese and unhealthy are SOL. To me this means that the poor must be targeted for intervention on the awareness end. They need to know what their apathy is leading to, and that there are ways they can help themselves.
There are some great sites out there on the web for conscious eating and shelves of books on the subject. I am a firm believer in the value of getting people to pay much more attention to what they eat as a way of battling obesity and ultimately diet-related disease, and the good news is that better nutrition at lower prices are now available to anyone who cares to pay attention. Question - how do we get the less wealthy to pay attention?
Here are some good links to websites with nutritional hints, recipes, information on CSA memberships, details about wild foods, tips on getting good food for less money, and information about the health effects and benefits of your dietary habits. If you've got more links, please include them in your comments!
Local Harvest: Community Supported Agriculture [CSA]
Prodigal Gardens
One Big Health Nut
Urban Garden Casual
The Garden Granny
Life on a Shoestring Budget
PolitiCook
Wise Living Journal
Recipe for America
Homemaker's Paradise
Eating Liberally